


All Rearranged

by rattatatosk



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Body Horror, Don't Poke the Science, Existential Crisis, Gen, Ghost Physics How Do They Work, Ghosts, Teenagers Making Bad Life Choices, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 00:21:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11115978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rattatatosk/pseuds/rattatatosk
Summary: In which experimental extra-dimensional portals are not toys, and you should not poke them, even if it will impress your (definitely not a) girlfriend.





	All Rearranged

"I dunno, guys," Danny said, as they peered down the stairs into the darkened basement laboratory,"Are you sure you don't just wanna play video games instead?"

"Are you kidding?” Sam asked, “Come on, Danny, aren't you even a little curious about your parents' supposedly 'greatest invention ever'?"

"Honestly? No. Not really," Danny grumbled. "This place always creeps me out, and besides, they said it didn't even work."

"Then it won't take long to check it out!” she wheedled. “ _C'mon._ Your parents are hardly ever both out of the house at once. This is the perfect chance! We play video games or go to the Nasty Burger _every_ day. I wanna do something _different_ for once."

"She's right, dude," Tucker chimed in. "Your parents are almost always down here tinkering with _something._ We're probably not gonna get another shot."

"Ugh, _fine_ ," Danny said, rolling his eyes and hitting the switch for the main lights. "But don't blame me when it turns out to be boring. Half the stuff they make won't even turn on, and the rest of it usually blows up before it can do anything."

"Yes!" Sam crowed in triumph, sprinting down the stairs and into the lab. There was a whole pile of half-dissembled gadgets piled on one table, and she immediately started poking at them. "I wish _my_ parents did something this interesting."

"No, you don't,” Danny sighed. “All they do is blather on about ghosts all the time. I have no idea why. They've never even _seen_ a ghost, but they spend all their time making this stuff to hunt them."

"So? It's better than having to listen to stories about country clubs and canasta," Sam said, picking up a blinking piece of circuitboard and flicking it before tossing it back in the pile of junk. "C'mon. Show us this portal."

"It's over here," Danny said, waving towards the back of the lab. A massive, circular door took up most of the wall, made of heavy steel. The space next to it was filled with panels, readouts and dozens of blinking buttons. Danny hit a switch on the wall, and the door's two panels slid open, revealing a large, cavernous space inside.  
  
"See? It's a giant door to a room that goes nowhere. Useless."

"Well? Go inside then."

"Are you kidding? No way!"  
  
"Why not? You just said it was empty."  
  
"Yeah, but there might be like... radiation or toxic goop or something hanging around, I dunno. They're always making Jazz and me sit through these boring lectures about lab safety. They even made these custom hazmat suits for us that we're supposed to wear whenever we're down here."

"Haha, oh yeah, they did," Tucker snickered. "I forgot about those."

"Seriously?" Sam said, "That's awesome! C'mon, Danny, put it on. I wanna see."

"Why, so you can laugh at me? No. It looks ridiculous."

"No, no, it'll be cool! I've got my camera--We can set it up like a shot from one of those old sci fi movies. Remember The Creeping Terror? You can be like the scientist exploring alien technology!"

Danny considered this. He'd always thought the suit looked stupid, but if _Sam_ thought it was gonna be cool... Besides, if he really _was_ going to take a closer look at the portal, it'd be better to wear it. Then at least if his parents came home and interrupted them, he'd be spared another lecture on safety protocols. Probably.

"All right, all right," he relented."You can take your picture. But then we really should get outta here. If my parents find us poking around down here, I'll be on test tube cleaning duty for a _month_.”

"Awesome!" Sam said, and started rummaging in her bag.

 

\--//--

 

A few minutes later, Danny was all suited up and peering nervously into the portal. "Ugh, this thing is even creepier up close," he muttered. "Let's hurry this up."  
  
"Okay," Sam said. "I've got the shot lined up. Just step back a little bit further..."

"'Kay," Danny said, taking a few steps back. Something turned under his foot as he did, and he stumbled, arms flailing until he managed to grab one of the panels on the side wall to steady himself. There was a small click as he pulled himself up again.  
  
"Danny! Are you all right?" Tucker called.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I think there was just a loose screwdriver or something on the floor-- _woah_!" He stumbled again as the ground shook under him.  
  
"What is it?" Sam asked.  
  
"I dunno, the floor is like, _moving_. Are we getting an earthquake?"  
  
"What are you talking about, dude? The floor is fine," Tucker said.  
  
"Yeah, there's no earthquake, Danny. Maybe- maybe you should come out of there."

Danny looked between his friends' worried faces, and the walls of the portal, where pinpricks of green light were rapidly starting to appear. "Yeah, uh, I-I think you might be right--" he said, stepping forward—only to have the portal door slam shut in front of him.

"WOAH! _Danny!"_ Tucker and Sam shouted, and Danny could hear the muffled pounding as they tried to open the door. He was doing the same on the inside, frantically running his hands over the edges and walls, trying to find some kind of release switch. Around him, the green dots of light were splintering into lines, and there was a slow whirring noise that was rapidly getting faster-- and _louder_.

"Guys?" he called, voice pitching high in panic. "Guys, let me out!"

"We're trying!" Sam shouted back, and Danny could hear Tucker cursing as he flipped through the switches and panels outside. "Nothing's working!" he shouted.

The whirring noise was joined by a faint whispering hiss, like a thousand bees buzzing. Danny turned to look, and immediately pressed his back against the door, trying to get as far away as possible. In front of him, a slow, swirling mass of green energy had filled the back wall of the portal and was now expanding outward. Thin tendrils of light were reaching out from it, crackling with a high-pitched electric whine. " _GUYS!"_ Danny shouted, trying desperately to remember how to breathe as the tendrils inched closer to him. A few of them brushed his face, burning his skin and making all his hair stand on end.

_"DANNY!"_ someone shouted back-- he couldn't tell if it was Tucker or Sam or both of them at once. The light was growing brighter and brighter now, shifting from a neon green into a blinding white, like a miniature sun, as the noise around him rose into an endless, hissing roar--

\--then the light touched him, and everything dissolved.

 

\--//--

 

Outside, Tucker and Sam were frantically throwing switches, desperately trying to get the portal door open again, as the metal underneath their fingers started to shake and rattle. Danny was shouting and pounding the door from the inside, and there was a disturbing rumbling buzz like an angry storm cloud that was vibrating through the walls.

"Tucker, do something!" Sam shouted. "You're the computer genius, turn it _off_!"

"I tried that! Nothing's working! I can't find the power source for this thing anywhere!"

_"GUYS-!"_ Danny shouted, high and desperate, and the portal shuddered and shook, the metal seams screeching like they were about to blow apart. A deep rumble shook the floor, knocking both of them down-- and for a single second there was silence. Sam looked up, hoping, maybe--

Then the screams began.

 

\--//--

 

Danny felt-- he felt--

_lava pouring through him, burning from the inside out - electricity crackling from his fingers -- icicles stabbing him in the chest, frozen crystals growing growing out from his center, piercing his organs, moving up up up through his throat-- lungs full of glass mouth full of fire - couldn't breathe couldn't breathe couldn't -- his skin was melting, finger bones pushing through sharp and exposed like claws - he was dissolving, dissolving into fire, electric buzz snaking through the memory of his veins and it hurt it hurt it hurt please stop, stop, stop -- please no more, he couldn't, he couldn't, it was too much and he -_

_he was everything and everywhere and infinite unending cosmos burning burning into stars through distant corners of the universe and then he – and then he was -_

_-_ then he was nowhere and nothing at all.

 

\--//--

 

Sam and Tucker clung together, pressed against the back wall of the lab and watching the portal, trembling, shaking, and sick with fear and horror. The screams-- _Danny, that was Danny in there, her best friend, screaming in pain like he was dying and it was her fault her fault all of it--_ rose higher and higher and she wanted to block them out, wanted to cover her ears, but she couldn't move, frozen in place and anyway it wasn't fair to Danny, was it-- someone had to hear, someone had to be there if he was- if he was going to -

Her ears were ringing and time seemed to stretch out, and it was a long few minutes before she realized that the screams had stopped, and it was only the memory of them that was still echoing in her ears. Tucker was shaking her shoulder and pointing, and she looked over at the portal just in time to see the doors slide open again with a soft pneumatic _hiss_.

Sam swallowed hard. She wanted to move, wanted to run to Danny's side and make sure he was okay, tell him everything was fine and she was sorry and he was right and they should have played the stupid video games after all. But she couldn't seem to make herself stand up-- because standing up meant she'd have to see him, and she knew-- she'd heard the screams and she knew it wouldn't be good, couldn't possibly be good. She looked over at Tucker, who looked grey and queasy like he was having the exact same thoughts.

"We-- we have to check him," she whispered, hoarsely. "We have to- to see."

"Y-yeah," Tucker nodded, and didn't move.

Her fault. This was her fault, she pushed Danny to go in there, Danny hadn't even wanted to come down here. She had to be the one to do this. "C'mon," she whispered, taking his hand. "Together."

Slowly, slowly, she stood up, pulling Tucker with her. They crept up to the door, which loomed cold and silent over them. Its edges glowed softly now, lit from behind with an eerie green light. Peering in, she saw the back wall was no longer black, but pulsed with some kind of swirling energy. And on the floor--

" _Danny?!"_

There was something-- _someone_ on the floor. It _had_ to be Danny, she knew that, who else could it be? But it looked-- he didn't even look _human_. He was still human-shaped, curled on his side, with the same height and build, and he was even wearing the same style of jumpsuit. But the colors were wrong; white on black instead of black on white, and as for the rest of him...

His hair was white; impossibly white. It shone so brightly it almost looked like it was glowing in the dim light of the portal. No, it _was_ glowing; a faint, shining glow like a nightlight. All of him glowed, actually; a faint aura of light surrounded him. It was flickering slightly, and with a sharp gasp, Sam realized she could actually _see through_ Danny's body to the floor below.

This couldn't be real. It was impossible. She was relieved not to find the- the dismembered _parts_ that half of her had been sure they'd find, but this was--

"Danny?! Is that- is that you, man?" Tucker knelt down on the floor next to Danny, reaching out to turn him over-- and Sam's stomach flipped as Tucker's hands went right through Danny's shoulders.

"Oh, god," Sam hissed. There was only one thing this could be, right? Danny was a- a _ghost_. His parents had been right after all, ghosts were real, and now he was one of them...

Which meant he was dead. He had to be. Her fault.

"Danny?” she whispered, kneeling down next to him. “Danny, if that's you... please wake up," She started to reach for his hand, only to withdraw it when her fingers passed through his. "Please, please, please wake up. I'm so sorry, this wasn't- I didn't mean-"

"Nnngh," Danny croaked, his voice soft and raspy. "S- Sam? Tuck?"

"We're here, man. Just- just take it easy, okay?" Tucker said, clearly trying (and failing) to sound reassuring.

"We can't pick you up, Danny," Sam said, "you have to try to sit up for us, okay?"

"Nnnn-what'dyoumean, can't--" his eyes cracked open, and Sam flinched back: his eyes were _green_ , green and glowing like the pulsing wall of energy behind them.

"Sam? What is it?" Apparently catching her fear, Danny sat up all at once-- or tried to. Sam blinked, and realized Danny was now _above_ them-- floating, right up near the ceiling. She could see the lights on the top panels blinking through his suit.

"Woah! How did you guys get down there-- wait. What?" Danny twisted around, trying to figure out how he could suddenly be looking _down_ at his friends. "Is this- is this the _ceiling_? Sam- Tucker- what are you- what am I-- what _happened_?"

"That's what we need to ask _you_. Danny, _look_ at yourself." Sam pulled a compact from her pocket and opened it, pushing the mirror at him. He reached out for it, only to have his fingers pass through it. "Ahh! What? What was that? Why can't I-?" he held up a hand and stared at it, suddenly realizing he could see straight through to their faces below him. "Oh god. Oh god, what? What the hell. Am I- Am I- shit, am I a _ghost_?”

"I-I dunno, Danny, I think maybe you _are_. _Look_ ," Sam said, holding the mirror up so he could see. His eyes widened as he took in the green eyes and white hair reflecting back at him. He bobbed in the air, hands over his mouth in horror. "I'm a ghost? I'm a ghost. Oh god. Oh god. Am I- did I die? Am I dead? I have to be, right? Oh god, my parents are gonna _kill_ me."

Shit, his _parents_. Sam hadn't even thought of that. What were they going to do if they found him here, like _this_?

The same thought seemed to have occurred to Danny, too. “Ohmigod omigod omigod, _guys,_ what do I do? What do we _do?_ I can't- I can't- they're gonna come back and they can't see me like this, I'm- I'm not- I- _"_

Danny was tearing at his hair, twisting back and forth as he looked from Sam, to Tucker, to the portal, to the stairs. The more panicked he got, the more his form started to flicker, bits of him disappearing only to reappear seconds later. He drifted further down, looking like he wanted to pace, only to sink up to his waist once his feet touched the floor.

“Gaah! What _is_ this, what is happening to me?”

“Woah woah woah! Danny, Danny, _calm down_ ,” Sam said, reaching out to grab him. To both their surprise, it actually worked, and she managed to pull him back out of the floor, though he still didn't feel totally solid. More like Jello; a thin, semi-solid skin over a squishy center.

“How can I calm down, Sam? _I'm probably dead_ and when my parents come home and see me like this, they're going to- I don't know, zap me or bottle me up or maybe just yell at me for a million years and in the end I'm going to end up _extra dead!”_

She winced at the way he kept saying _dead_ but tried to sound soothing anyway. “I know, I know! But the more you panic the more you seem to start, like, dissolving. So we have to sit down and think this out.”

“He's got a point, though,” Tucker said. “It's not like we can hide this! I mean, like, even if we all snuck out of here, his parents are going to notice Danny's missing at some point, and then what do we do?”

“We- We could- What if we just told them what happened? It was an accident, we couldn't have known that this would-”

“Are you kidding me, Sam? Danny's a _ghost_ now. His parents are _ghost hunters_. Who _knows_ how they'll react to this?”

“Guys? I fell through the floor again. A little help, maybe?” Danny called, plaintively. Tucker and Sam shared a glance, then hauled Danny back to his feet-- only for him to disappear completely.

“Woah!”

“Danny?”

“I'm- I'm still right here guys.”

“I mean, I can _hear_ you, Danny, but you just-- you just disappeared.”

“I what?” he asked, and with a shudder, he reappeared, slumping slightly in their arms. “Oh man. I don't know if I can handle this. Is- is all this going to keep happening?”

“See, Sam, he's not even stable enough to stay visible. How is he supposed to tell his parents anything? You've seen them; will they even keep listening past the word 'ghost'?”

“Well, what else are we supposed to do, Tucker? It's not like he can--”

She was interrupted by the distinct sound of a door slamming up above. " _Danny? Danny, I'm home!_ " Jazz called from the kitchen.

"Shit! Shit shit shit, it's Jazz,” Danny muttered, gripping Tucker's arm. “We can't let her see me like this, either, guys! We have to do _something_ , and we need to do it now!”

"I don't know! You were invisible just a second ago, try doing that again!"

"How! I don't even know how I did that in the first place -"

"He can't do that, Tucker, how are we supposed to explain where he went!"

_"Danny! You and your friends better not be playing in the lab again!"_

Sam and Tucker were still arguing over what their best course of action was, but Danny could no longer hear them. His whole being was consumed by panic as the reality of the situation came crashing down on him. He felt cold and shaky and a little bit like he might burst into tears at any minute-- if he even still could burst into tears. His throat felt tight and he wondered idly why it wasn't harder to breathe, only to realize that he hadn't _been_ breathing for- at least the last few minutes. Probably since that light had touched him.

Oh god, he really _was_ dead, wasn't he? He'd been saying it, but it hadn't really sunk in. What- what was going to happen to him? Was he just going to end up haunting his house, or the town, forever? Even if his family somehow accepted him, school, college, being an astronaut-- all that was impossible now, wasn't it? He was _dead_. His life was over and done but somehow he was still here, thinking and talking and existing but also—stuck. Unchanging. A ghost. Just a memory of who he'd been. _Forever_.

Jazz's voice echoed from upstairs. _“Seriously, Danny. Just go upstairs to your room and I'll pretend I didn't even see any of you down there, okay?”_

It was too much. Too much to handle, too much to think about. He curled in on himself, tucking himself into a tight ball even as he floated, still several feet off the ground. He didn't want this. He'd never cared about ghosts, his parents' experiments, any of it, and now--

_I can't do this. I can't, I can't, I just want to be normal, I just want to go back in time and make this never have happened, turn back the clock and stop this, just make it GO AWAY--_

Sam and Tucker, still arguing, stopped suddenly as a shudder of motion behind them caught their attention. It was Danny. He'd curled up into a ball in midair, but something was changing about him-- he was flickering again, but instead of becoming more invisible or more transparent, it almost looked like he was becoming more _solid_. The glow around him faded, and then, with a rush of air and a bright flash of light, Danny fell to the floor between them, once again his normal, _human_ self. He blinked slowly at his hand, which was once again solid, flesh-and-blood, and not at all transparent. "Huh," he muttered.

Then he threw up.

Which, of course, was exactly the moment Jazz came down the stairs.

"I told you, I can't keep covering for you when you're not supposed to be -- _Danny!"_ She rushed forward, doing her best to kneel next to him and be supportive while still avoiding the puddle of sick. “Oh my god, Danny, what happened?” She looked over at the green light of the portal, still pulsing slowly. “Isn't that- wasn't that the portal Mom and Dad were working on? Wasn't that turned off?”

She looked to Danny, who had collapsed, pale and shaking, and then at Sam and Tucker. “Okay. What the _hell_ did the three of you do down here?”

 

\--//--

 

It was all a lot of chaos and noise after that. Sam and Tucker stumbled over an explanation that amounted to 90% of the truth, too scared and panicked to think of a decent lie. They told Jazz that they'd come downstairs to look at the portal, Danny had somehow turned it on accidentally, and then it went all green and glowy. The only part they left out was Danny's mysterious transformations.

Then Jazz called her parents. She waved Tucker and Sam off before they could even start to protest. “You two-- don't even start. And Danny--Don't even try to tell me you're fine, Danny. I don't mind making excuses for you most of the time, but I draw the line at vomit. _And_ you set off their experimental Fenton Whatever-It-Is. They're gonna notice that. They're gonna kill _me_ if I try to cover up a disaster like this. And I think you probably need to go to a hospital.”

 

\--//--

 

He did, in the end, go to the hospital. The doctors asked a lot of questions, and did a lot of tests, most of which he was only occasionally conscious for. Sam and Tucker filled in answers where they could, before they were summarily shuffled off to their own homes, with promises of some stern phone calls and lectures to come later.

The doctors kept Danny for a few days, before eventually releasing him without any real diagnosis. He learned later there had been a lot of baffled discussion among the doctors as to the cause of his symptoms. The tests kept coming back either completely normal or wildly off the charts, and it was an open debate as to what exactly had happened to him. Their best guess was some kind of radiation exposure or chemical poisoning, but as he didn't get worse and he mostly suffered flu-like symptoms, in the end, they decided, there was little they could do and he would likely be fine after a few weeks.

His parents, who had a rather better idea of the nature of the portal, only said that he was extremely lucky-- miraculously lucky, really-- to have gotten off so lightly. Ectoplasm was very dangerous and nothing to toy around with, and it was fortunate he'd been wearing his hazmat suit, wasn't it? Once he was lucid again, Danny had to agree-- though more because he had somehow managed to avoid any bits of him going intangible or invisible during the time he was in the hospital. It still happened after he got home, but fortunately his parents (after delivering a truly epic lecture about proper lab safety protocols) were mostly content to leave him alone to rest. He got the sense that they were too relieved to find him all right to really be as angry at him as they wanted to be.

He did need the rest-- as it turned out, the doctors were right about being sick for a few weeks-- and Danny supposed it only made sense given he'd- he'd been _turned inside out_ and had his molecules all scrambled up, or whatever that light had done to him. He didn't remember much, but he did remember that pain. He wasn't sure he'd ever be able to forget it. Really, it was probably for the best they'd given him some sedatives, or the nightmares might have kept him up most nights.

They did still find him sometimes, though.

 

-–//--

 

Danny sat bolt upright, gasping and clutching at his chest, teeth gritted at the pain as green light flashed and lightning arced through him-- but no. He was fine. That was just a memory.

He glanced at the clock next to his bed. 3:15 AM. Great. Tomorrow was the day he was meant to go back to school, but he doubted he'd be getting back to sleep anytime soon. Guess he'd be navigating classes while sleep deprived. That should be fun.

He sighed, running a hand through his hair. At least he was staying mostly human, these days. So he shouldn't have to worry too much about randomly falling through his desk, or anything like that. Probably. Hopefully. These last few days he'd been starting to feel-- not normal, exactly, but... more settled. His insides didn't feel like a lava lamp anymore, so that was good.

Even as he felt a little better physically, though, he was still plagued by questions. Just what had _happened_ to him, that day? The more he thought about it, the less sense any of it made. He'd been-- he'd been a ghost, he'd been _dead_ , floating and phasing through objects and walls, and then he'd just-- changed back. Human. Heart beating, blood pumping. Except even now, if he concentrated... he flexed his hand, and it flickered, becoming transparent. He pushed it through the wall of his nightstand, and he could _feel_ the objects inside. If he grabbed one, and concentrated a little harder... he could pull it right out. The rest of him hadn't changed. He was still human, still alive, but at the same time, able to use these ghostly abilities. How did _that_ work? And, well. He hadn't tried it yet, but he thought-- he had a feeling that if he tried, he might be able to... change back. Go all the way ghost again. Could he really just switch back and forth like that? How was that _possible_?

He wished he felt brave enough to ask his parents. They'd studied this stuff his whole life.He was sure that Mom, at least, would have some kind of scientific theory. But-- they hunted ghosts. Even if he was only sometimes a ghost-- half a ghost-- something-- would they really be okay with helping him? Or would they jump on the chance to study this new, impossible specimen and nevermind that he was their son? He wanted to believe they'd never hurt him-- he did believe that, mostly-- but, well, as of right now, there were probably a dozen items all designed to hurt or kill him just in his own kitchen.

He sighed and flipped back on his bed. He would-- he'd just wait and see. Go to school tomorrow. Try to get back to normal life. See how it went. It was probably best to get these ghost powers under control first, anyway. He'd look pretty stupid if he tried to tell his parents, “hey I'm half ghost now” and then couldn't transform, right?

Of course, if he transformed accidentally and hadn't told them first, that was going to cause a lot of problems too. He _really_ didn't want to get zapped with some kind of laser gun or chopped up by a Fenton Ghost Blender _before_ he had a chance to explain.

Right on cue, he felt a wave of cold wash over him, and before he could react, he found himself falling, slipping through his blankets and bed and landing with a soft thud on the living room floor below. He looked up at the ceiling with a scowl. Just when he thought he was getting some kind of control...

He sighed again, and started to trudge up the stairs, back to his room.

It was going to be a long night.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So I saw some very cool Danny Phantom fanart a few weeks back, and now I've fallen headfirst back into this show, a decade after I first saw it. I feel like this got a little darker and more existential than I first intended, but like... any way you slice it, Danny's accident had to be a pretty horrific experience. The kid *died*, and then he got better? Sort of? I'm still working out my exact thoughts on Half Ghost Physics, but that Fenton Portal is definitely some kind of nuclear reactor/particle accelerator thing, and getting trapped in there while it rips open a hole in reality is not going to be pleasant.


End file.
